China: Cinema, Politics and Scholarship

[16:07 2/1/2008 5088-Donald-Ch03.tex] Paper: a4 Job No: 5088 Donald: Film Studies (SAGE Handbook) Page: 54 54–73

3China: Cinema, Politics and

Scholarship

S t e p h a n i e H e m e l r y k D o n a l d a n d P a o l a V o c i

In 2005, film scholars from inside and outsideChina came together at a conference to cel-ebrate one hundred years of Chinese cinemaunder the rubric of ‘National, Transnational,and International: Chinese Cinema and AsianCinema in the Context of Globalization’.1

This ambitious title implied a broad definitionof ‘Chinese cinema’ that includes both HongKong and Taiwanese cinemas, whilst ‘Asiancinema’ was a gesture towards the risingstar of Korean film. The terminology in partreflects a constraint of the Chinese language,in which the absence of plural markers doesnot allow the use of the English phrase‘Chinese cinemas’. (An emerging alternativeis the phrase huayu dianying or ‘Chineselanguage cinema’, which is increasinglybeing used to acknowledge the differentgeopolitical and cultural contexts in whichChinese cinema has developed.)2 In additionto its title, the location and the scope of theconference offer insights into Film Studiesin the Chinese context. The conference tookplace in two venues, Beijing and Shanghai,and participants were expected to be present

at both events. The split location reflecteda commonly accepted, albeit oversimplified,view of these two cities and their roles indefining film production and discourse aroundcinema. The importance of place in shapingthe subtleties of the Chinese tradition of filmanalysis is the first point in our story here.

Pre-liberation cinema – that is, filmsmade before the foundation of the People’sRepublic of China (PRC) in 1949 – isgenerally identified with Shanghai studios.Film scholarship on the Shanghai pai, theShanghai movement or trend of the 1930sand 1940s, has grown both in China andabroad especially since the mid- to latenineties (Lee, 1999; Zhang Y., 1999). Beijingstudios gained more importance after 1949,and informed discussion and scholarship onfilm has since developed mostly, althoughby no means exclusively, in the capital. Forexample, scholars based at the Beijing FilmInstitute and Beijing University in particularplayed a major role in the theoretical debate onnew cinematic trends in the 1980s. Accordingto this division, Chinese cinema’s tension


CHINA: CINEMA, POLITICS AND SCHOLARSHIP 55

between the national and the transnational,mirrors the opposition between Beijing’spolitical soul with its idealism and ideology,and Shanghai’s cultural essence with itscreativity and pragmatism. Whereas Beijingis the default setting for a cinema concernedwith the nation, the choice of Shanghaias an additional location for the centennialcelebration points to the importance of a moreglobally oriented cinema and also implicitlypays homage to Hong Kong filmic tradition(Fu, 2003).

Spatial contingencies and political move-ments define the histories of Chinese filmanalysis rather more accurately than woulda narrative based on individual scholars andtheir influence. It may be a question ofattitude within China studies in general orit may truly be a reflection of a differentprocess in the formation of knowledge,but whereas names define movements inAnglophone traditions, it is more usual inChinese Film Studies for names to becomeattached to, or representative of, times, placesand political events. That said, we shall ofcourse cite those film scholars who havebeen particularly responsive to historicalconditions, or especially alert to the key issuesin film of their day.

The stated goal of the 2005 conferencewas ‘to re-examine the role of cinema inthe formation of Chinese modernity’ (ouritalics). This is not surprising to scholarsof any aspect of Chinese culture, societyand politics. Chinese modernity sits at thecentre of much discussion of how Chinahas developed over the past four hundredyears, and of how its particular trajectoryboth complements and contradicts patternsof development elsewhere in the world. InChinese Film Studies the issue of Chinesemodernity as a shaping discourse for thepolitics of culture over the past century hasbeen a major inspiration for filmmakers and apreferred critical angle for cultural commenta-tors. Western scholars writing about Europeanfilm and the emergence of Hollywood havealso associated cinema with technologicalrevolution and, very early on in cinema’sgrowth, viewed it as a modern medium which

could capture and possibly transform the new,fast-paced, changing reality of modern life.As such, the discussions were not far removedfrom Walter Benjamin’s observation that thespeed of film was almost necessitated by thepace of modern existence. In China, however,the introduction and development of cinemawas not just apposite to modern times, itcontributed to the revolutionary and radicalcharacter of the entire twentieth century.Studies of Chinese film theory should neveromit this socio-political understanding.

The modern in China was not new to thetwentieth century. Modernity was emergentthroughout the Manchu-Qing dynasty (1644–1911) in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies.3 However, cinema began as impe-rial China ended, with the revolution of 1912which ushered in the first republic and a periodof great uncertainty and multiple conflicts.From the start, the discourse on cinemafound itself deeply linked with the debatesurrounding the rebuilding of a nation in a newinternational context. One hundred years later,after the refashioning of the old Communistregime and the explosion of consumeristculture in China, things seem to have come fullcircle. In the latest ‘global age’ of cinema, asfilm scholars are asked to reflect on the role ofcinema in the formation of Chinese modernity,cinema still finds itself deeply linked to thenation, in a more or less tense relationshipwith the State, and central to the articulationof the idea of China through cinematic art,spectatorship, and narrative.

We have begun this chapter with the brieftale of two cities in the 2005 centennial cele-bration of Chinese cinema in order to establishthe premise that Film Studies in China hastraditionally enjoyed very little autonomy, andmost of the work that addresses issues of filmculture and film theory directly relates themto the more prevalent discourse generated bynational film history. For instance, Li Daoxin’sin-depth survey of the century of Chinese filmculture from 1905 to 2004, published in 2005,still frames the story as a sequence of stagesin the creation of a national cinema. Filmculture as it developed up until the late 1940sis related almost exclusively to film history


56 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF FILM STUDIES

and the discussion of representative films; filmculture after the eighties is presented throughthe discourse surrounding some of its mostprominent auteurs. The first three sections ofLi’s history, covering the period up to 1979,presents long lists of movies accompaniedby in-depth analyses of films like Yijiangchunshui xiangdong liu (Spring River FlowsEast, Cai Chusheng, China, 1947) and Wuyayu maque (Crows and Sparrows, Zheng Junli,China, 1949). In the final section, which spansthe period from 1979 to 2004 that Li definesas ‘integrated cultural expansion’(2005: 351),the focus shifts to specific directors: wholechapters are dedicated to Xie Jin, ChenKaige, Zhang Yimou as the leading auteurs inMainland China; Hou Hsiao-hsien, to EdwardYang and Ang Li in Taiwan; and to JohnWoo and Tsui Hark in Hong Kong. As aresult, notions of genre and film aestheticsare mostly derived from commentaries onspecific film texts or filmmakers. The roleof audiences in the creation of the filmexperience – that is, not just as consumersof films but also as producers of meaning –is not acknowledged. It is therefore historyabove all that drives forward the framing ofLi’s analytical approach.

Two other important factors further com-plicate the localization of film culture inChina. The first is that film theory in Chinahas traditionally been linked to film practice.Up until very recently, many Chinese filmtheorists and critics have worked outsideuniversities. Even nowadays, although moreChinese film scholars are affiliated to tertiaryinstitutions, many not only teach both theoryand practice but they are also often involved inthe film industry as screenwriters, consultantsor producers. The blending of practitioner andcritic is less usual in the Western context.Although one could argue that the film prac-tice and writing of the fictio-documentaristCui Zi’en (2001; 2003) is somewhat akin tothe marriage of practice and theory attemptedby someone like Laura Mulvey, the differenceis that Cui is professionally both a writer anda filmmaker whilst most Western writers takeup filmmaking as a secondary exploration oftheir theoretical ideas.

The second complicating factor is thatup until the late 1970s, most Western filmtheory was not available in translation, andconcepts such as cinematic ontology, auteurtheory, or simply discussions about cinematicforms of expression and artistic techniquesdid not become part of the discourse oncinema until the early 1980s. It is important toremember that some Chinese film theoreticalconcepts, such as minzu shi (nation-style),emerged from problematics and philosophicaltraditions other than the imported ideasof more recent debates. For instance, inthe 1980s, many film scholars distancedthemselves from western film theory andargued that in China film aesthetic was betterapproached by relying on earlier Chinesetraditional arts (Chen Xihe et al., 2005: 13).

Now, however, Chinese Film Studies hasmoved decisively beyond the nation and intoa global context, and film theory has becomethoroughly internationalized in relation tothe study of global Chinese cinema. Com-parative studies and collaborative projectsbetween Chinese scholars in China and otherscholars, both Chinese and non-Chinese,living elsewhere in the world are becomingroutine. There has been a shift away fromthe translation and adaptation model – amodel that was characterized by periodicdiscoveries (and translations) of Westerntheories which were subsequently applied tothe national context. Chinese scholars arenow also translated into English (Dai, 1995;Dai, 1999; Dai, 2002; Lü, 2005; Ni, 2002),and Chinese cinema scholars are seekingpublication in Chinese rather than exclusivelyin English language publications (see Luand Yeh, 2005; Marchetti, 2005; Voci, 2006;Zhang Y., 2005; Zhang Y., 2006a; Zhang Y.,2006b; Zhang Z., 2006). Conferences, like theone referred to at the beginning of the chapter,now discuss not only Chinese national cinemabut also broader issues in film theory andaesthetics in specifically Chinese contexts(Chen Xihe et al., 2005).

Despite the increasing interaction betweenscholarly traditions, however, Chinese theorydoes still depend on historical periodizationto frame both its ideas and reflection on its



own development as an intellectual field. Ina collection on contemporary film theory,Chen Xihe (2005) discusses what he termsthe three main stages in the developmentof Chinese film theory. The first is the ‘redphase’ (1949–79), in which film was seen asa vehicle for didacticism and revolutionaryideology. Second is the ‘blue phase’, char-acterized by the Chinese appropriation ofideas from main Western theorists like NickBrowne, Janet Staiger, Bill Nichols, RobertRosen and Ann Kaplan. And third is the‘post-blue phase’, referring to contemporarydevelopments including discussion of newmedia. Chen argues that this latest phasehas largely been shaped by globalizationand transnational trends which, rather thanleading theorists away from the focus oncontingency, have revived questions of thenational, although now in a more complexinternational and global situation (Chen Xiheet al., 2005: 10). According to Chen, a top-down approach was dominant in the earlierperiods, with an emphasis on ideology inthe red phase and on aesthetics and theoryin the blue phase. In the post-blue phase ofrecent years, however, Chinese film scholarshave begun to adopt a bottom-up perspectivethat pays greater attention to the film text, tofilms’ cultural and social context, and also todata analyses reflecting the industrial contextof production and distribution (Chen Xiheet al., 2005: 10). As many of China’s concernsand debates likewise focus on this issue ofregional, national and transnational influence,it is reasonable to infer that once again filmtheory is being true to its political and socialtime and space (Zhang, 2002).

Our central argument, then, is that the linkbetween cinema and the nation has alwaysbeen, and remains not only a crucial analyticalframework in the analysis of Chinese cinema(Berry and Farquhar, 2006) but also in thedevelopment of Chinese film theory. Thechapter therefore has two main objectives.The first is to provide a guide to some of thekey moments and issues that have contributedto the film experience in China. Yet as wewant to challenge any monolithic vision ofChinese Film Studies, our second objective

is to show how, even within the ‘nation’paradigm, the role of cinema has changedquite considerably – most notably throughthe impact of the diverse Chinese cinemasfrom within the Mainland and beyond.Although a chronological narrative of Chinesefilm history and the tensions which havecharacterized film culture in China structuresthe chapter, our final section switches thefocus away from historical periods to threeoverarching issues that have helped to defineChinese Film Studies: realism, national style(minzu shi) and the opening of the national toother (non-Mainland) Chinese cinemas.

BEFORE 1949

In 2000, Ann Hu directed Xi yangjing (Shadow Magic, China/Germany/Taiwan/US), a romantic retelling of thebeginning of Chinese cinema, inspired by thefirst historically documented Chinese film,Ding Jun Shan (Dingjun Mountain, JingfengRen, China), which in 1905 captured theperformance of the famous Beijing Operaactor Tan Xinpei (Ge, 2002).4 In the filman English entrepreneur, Raymond Wallace(Jared Harris), arrives in Beijing in 1902to start a new business: showing moviesto the Chinese. Liu Jinglun (Xia Yu), ayoung photographer with a deep curiosity fornovelties, becomes his partner and friend.Together they manage to attract the public totheir screenings and also begin to shoot filmslocally. Liu’s love for cinema, along with hispassion for the woman of his dreams, causesa series of cultural misunderstandings andsocial conflicts that arise from the oppositionbetween Chinese tradition and Westernmodernity. Despite oversimplifying bothhistorical events and cultural issues, Xi yangjing thus dramatizes a couple of themes thathave been at the core of critical work byfilm scholars inside and outside China. First,cinema started out as a foreign technologicalinnovation. And secondly, cinema wasviewed as a symbol of an imported modernityand, as such, became part of the larger debate



concerning the West and its influence onChinese culture and society.

The debate about form and content

By the early 1920s, cinema had gainedsignificant popularity, mostly within the urbanlimits of Shanghai and Beijing. As filmshowings became more frequent and moreaccessible, movie stars began to appearon the pages of pictorial magazines andjoined – without quite displacing – operaperformers in the eye of public fascination(Voci, 2002).5 Among the first to addresstheoretical issues were intellectuals comingfrom literary studies and the question ofcinema was thereby mixed up, in the twentiesand arguably through to the fifties, with abroader controversy concerning the respectivevalues of socially and politically engagedliterature and popular reading matter.

Cinema was thus seen not as an objectto be appreciated or analysed for its ownsake, but as a medium to be struggledover and improved for the sake of thenation. Some of the intellectuals in the1920s viewed cinema as a symbol of amore international or transnational modernity.For them, cinema was primarily a spectacleto be appreciated aesthetically, an icon ofthe new cosmopolitan urban culture mostevident in Shanghai. They championed a‘soft cinema’ (ruanxing dianying) that wouldemphasize form as well as content. LiuNa’ou, a writer who was part of the NewPerceptionist literary movement, criticizedthe use of theatrical or literary strategies andadvocated the use of a film language andvisual grammar which reflected the medium’svisual and technological nature.6 In Zhongguodianying miaoxie de shendu wenti (Problemsof Depth in Chinese Film Representation),Liu criticizes Chinese cinema for not beingcinematic and for overemphasizing words(intertitles) over images: ‘in our nationalcinema, words are many but images are few’(‘guochan dianying shi zi duo ying shao’) (Liu,1993: 260). Liu’s support for a soft cinemawas echoed by Huang Jiamo’s critique inthe same period of the low artistic quality

of leftist cinema, which he accused of beingtoo concerned with content to pay attentionto form (Voci, 2002: 74). Liu argued thatform (xingshi) should be at least equally asimportant as content (neirong) (Liu, 1993:256–61).

Supporters of the May Fourth movementpresented an opposing view of cinema.Taking its name from demonstrations on4 May 1919 protesting against the treaties ofVersailles, May Fourth intellectuals advocatedcultural and political renewal through socialresponsibility. Cinema, like literature and artin general, was viewed as a modern tool forengineering social and political change. Inopposition to the New Perceptionists, MayFourth adherents argued that cinema neededto serve the greater cause of rebuilding theChinese nation. A ‘hard cinema’, or ‘leftistcinema’ (zuoyi dianying) as it was labelledlater, should contribute to educating thepeople and inspiring revolution. In ‘Qingsuanruanxing dianying lun’ (‘A critique of softcinema’), Tang Na attacked the softness ofsoft cinema explicitly, criticizing it for beingtoo concerned with emotions (ganqing) andbeing simply entertaining (yule) (Tang, 1993:269–80). He argued that films should conveyideas as their main goal and that form andtechnical concerns should be subordinate tocontent. For Tang, filmmakers’ ideas (sikao)rather than their formal aesthetic choicesshould define a film (Tang, 1993: 274–78).Although after 1949 the needs of ideologyincreasingly determined which ideas wereacceptable, up until then the debate aboutform and content remained relatively open. Atthe time, there were no clear winners. Evenso, Mainland Chinese histories up until thelate eighties conventionally, and conveniently,portrayed pre-liberation cinema as dominatedby leftist filmmakers and theorists (Cheng,1963).

Leftist cinema and Shanghai starculture

Although supporters of soft cinema remainedvisible both at the level of production andpublic response, they tended to be less vocal



than their leftist counterparts. This may havebeen in part because they seldom fulfilled thedual role of filmmaker and film critic that wasalready a feature of film culture in China.People involved in leftist film productions,like the screenwriters Tian Han and XiaYan, took an active and a high-profile rolein political and theoretical discussions aboutcinema.And crucially, their writings appearedat a time of national emergency (Xia, 1982).7

It is not surprising that those who saw them-selves as creating the nation’s future displayedmore passion and more conviction whenchampioning their vision of cinema’s role inthe new society than modernist intellectualslike the New Perceptionists. Furthermore, thefoundation of the PRC in 1949 sanctioned the‘victory’of leftist cinema. This version of filmhistory was further entrenched in 1963 withthe publication of Cheng Jihua’s History ofthe Development of Chinese Cinema, whichbecame the authoritative point of referencein the field. Emphasizing the leftist traditionas the driving force in the developmentof both Chinese film production and filmcriticism, Cheng disregarded or denouncedany alternatives. Even though pioneeringhistories by Western scholars like Jay Leyda(1972) and Paul Clark (1987) clearly divergedfrom Cheng’s Communist party orthodoxy,they, like him, still emphasized politicalconcerns over other critical perspectives andleft unchallenged the view that socialist realistproductions of the 1950s and 1960s were anatural development from the earlier leftistfilms.

A re-evaluation of non-leftist films fromthe thirties and forties really got underwayonly in the eighties when Fifth Generationdirectors like Zhang Yimou, Li Shaohongand Chen Kaige were attracting the attentionof domestic critics and winning prizes atinternational festivals. At the same time asestablishing new Chinese cinema’s connec-tions with Western cinema, to which theFifth Generation directors had been the firstto be exposed after many years of quasi-isolation, Chinese and Western film scholarsstarted to rediscover pre-liberation Chinesecinema, seeking sources of inspiration outside

the leftist and socialist realist tradition, andsetting out to uncover a variety of previouslyunexplored issues related to both genre andproduction. In this vein, for example, ZhangZhen has noted the self-referential approachto femininity and womanhood of films madein the thirties (2001: 229).

The reassessment of the role of leftistcinema pointed to the existence of a lessexplicitly ideological and more escapistcinema which proved to be popular in thedecades before 1949. The fact that HongKong-based scholars led this revisionisthistory may have had something to do withHong Kong and Guangdong’s part in filmhistory being written out of the Communistorthodoxy (Fu, 2000; Li S., 2003; 2005).Studies of early Hong Kong cinema and itsdevelopment after 1949 highlighted the roleplayed by the Hong Kong industry before itbecame internationally popular – first in theseventies though the success of the martial artsgenre and then again in the nineties thanks todirectors like John Woo, Stanley Kwan, andWong Kar-wai (Fu and Desser, 2000).

The new histories also noted that, even attheir most dominant, leftist themes were oftencomplicated or even distorted by cinematicgenres and studios’ economic priorities.Iconic leftist (zuopai) films like Dalu (BigRoad, Sun Yu, China, 1934), Shizi jietou(Crossroads, Shen Xiling, China, 1937) orMalu tianshi (Street Angels, Yuan Muzhi,China, 1934) were revisited to reveal theirneorealist flavour and melodramatic mise enscène, or to uncover representational andnarrative elements that belied the revolution-ary tenor of the times (Berry, 1988a; Berry,1988b; Feng, 1985; Ma, 1989; Pang, 2002;Pickowicz, 1993).

Many studies demonstrated that ratherthan being simply oppositional to leftistideology, Hollywood-like star culture andfascination with certain film genres radicallyupset the political agenda. Christine Harris’1997 analysis of Xin nüxing (The NewWoman,Cai Chusheng, China, 1937) focuses on theintersection between film star culture andleftist cinema and reveals the connectionsbetween the film’s narrative and iconography



as well as its industrial and cultural contexts:publicity, production conditions, and an audi-ence reception mediated through the debateabout ‘new’ or ‘modern’ women. Similarly,Yomi Braester’s essay on Ma-Xu Weibang’sYeban gesheng (Singing at Midnight, China,1937) argues that the role of ‘monstrosity’in the revolutionary rhetoric of 1930s cinemahas been overlooked in analyses that privilegea binary opposition between ideological orpolitical messages and commercial entertain-ment strategies. In Yeban gesheng, arguesBraester, the horror genre reveals both aHollywood-influenced pleasure in spectacleand an implicit political commentary onthe Revolution’s contradictions and unsolvedproblems (2000: 107).

Two films that exemplify the shift incritical discourse surrounding pre-liberationfilms and the reassessment of the role of thenation in filmmaking are Shennü (Goddess,Wu Yonggang, China, 1934) and Dalu. Bothbelong to the revolutionary tradition of left-wing filmmaking committed to patriotic andcommunist ideals, and were praised for theirservice to nation-building ideals in ChengJihua’s standard history (1963). From thelate 1980s on, however, both were criticallyre-evaluated, especially in light of theoreticalwork on performance and charisma in stardomstudies (Berry, 1988b; Chow, 1995: 23–6;Mu, 1985). Shennü’ protagonist, a prostitutewho fights her evil pimp to achieve a betterlife for her son, was played by Ruan Lingyu,a legendary actress who committed suicide atthe age of 24.8 Ruan Lingyu’s intense close-ups and ‘regard en camera’ create a sensualatmosphere in which the political message isalmost totally lost. A shot of her legs as shewalks side by side with a client, for example,is a textbook example of fetishization. Thenarrative of Dalu concerns six young roadworkers who are constructing a strategicroad for the Chinese army during the warof resistance against the Japanese invasion.The film’s political message is complicated,however, by the presence of two femalecharacters who befriend the workers – one ofthem played by the glamorous Li Lili, a sexualicon of her times (Berry, 1988b). The girls

experience a social and political awakening,but they are also protagonists in several sceneswhich clearly evoke romantic connections,intimacy and sexuality.

In the 1940s the urgent need to rescuethe nation from both external and internaldangers – Japanese invasion and the corruptNationalist government – led to an evenstronger push to homogenize and rectify filmproductions and scholarship in order to elimi-nate possible distractions from, or distortionsof, the political message. In his Yan’an Talkson Arts and Literature (1942), Mao Zedongchallenges artists to ‘our literature and art arefirst for the workers, the class that leads therevolution’ (1967: 78). He insisted that theyshould put ‘the political criterion first andthe artistic criterion second’ (1967: 89). Suchchanges did not occur overnight, but it is fairto say that Chinese filmmakers’ work becameprogressively constrained by Party critiquesand the demand for self-critique. Similarly,the scope for critical analysis was increasinglylimited by the demands of revolutionaryCommunist ideology.

CINEMA AND REVOLUTION: 1949–76

In Chinese Film Studies, the conventionalview is that socialist realism dominatedthe period from 1949 to the early 1980s.That this politicized aesthetic was given aparticular slant in China, with realism imbuedwith a unique sense of romanticism andrevolutionary passion, became apparent inthe critical revisionism of the late eightiesand the nineties. In 1989 Esther Ching-meiYau commented on the intensity of thecentral relationships in war films – anobservation given further weight by MichaelBerry’s account of Hongse nianzi jun (RedDetachment of Women, Xie Jin, China, 1963),which cites the admission of the directorXie Jin that political interference spoilt thesecond half of the film by insisting thatall sexual references be removed from thescript (2000).9 Likewise, Stephanie HemelrykDonald (1997; 2005) observed the passionatekernel of the Party-state-people relationship in



cinema drama and has more recently shownhow children’s films of the 1980s, many ofthem commissioned through the Children’sFilm Studio which was founded and directedby the older revolutionary film elites of thefifties, continued to present human feeling(ganqing) as an emotional core of socialityrather than as interior individual feeling. Suchapproaches find, in other words, a degreeof connection or convergence between thesoft and leftist turns of thirty years earlier.At the time the films were made, however,few international film scholars were payingmuch attention to what was being screenedin China.10

Just as the creation of a film industry ded-icated to promoting the socialist romance ofrevolution was not achieved overnight, so theadoption of socialist realism failed to banishcompletely all traces of other styles – despitethe often brutal imposition of censorship thatreflected not just formal Party directives,but also, and less predictably, the state ofplay in factional infighting between hardlinersand ‘softer’ forces in the power hierarchy.11

Although often subordinated to revolutionarythemes, romance remained evident in manycomedies and dramas. Other genres with theirorigins in traditional Chinese opera, earlyHollywood and popular entertainments ofthe 1920s – melodrama, family movies, warfilms and historical romances, for example –continued to be produced, and their formalconventions and cultural connotations led tomoments of slippage, or even contradiction,within the orthodoxies of socialist realism.The 1959 drama Lin jia puzi (Lin Family Shop,Shui Hua, China), for example, tells the storyof the self-interested but ultimately hopelessdecisions of the shopkeeper Lin (Xie Tian)in response to the boycott of Japanese goodsafter the 1919 treaty. Finally bankrupted, Linflees leaving poorer creditors behind him,and the voice-over reminds the audience thatbig fish eat little fish in a cruel, capitalistworld. Against the grain of this heavy-handedextra-diegetic voice, the complexity of thefilm’s narrative suggests that Lin’s decisionsare driven by multiple forces and confusionsand, in the end, the character comes across

as not entirely unsympathetic. Despite itssocialist realist style, then, Lin jia puzi couldbe seen as ultimately a bourgeois film – asit was a few years later during the GreatProletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–74).The lead actor, Xie Tian, was criticized fortaking on the role of the shopkeeper. Thiswas typical of incidents at the time. Keymembers of the film elite like Yu Lan andTian Fang were thrown out of the studios andinto labour camps. Jiang Qing, Mao’s last wifeand a former actress, used her factional powerduring the Cultural Revolution to punishmore successful erstwhile colleagues fromthe film and theatre worlds of the 1940s.The denunciation of Xie Tian provides anunhappy example of film theory being usedto undermine the film as a work of art and theactor as a professional performer for reasonsof personal advantage in political factions.

AFTER MAO: 1976–89

The economic reforms following the deathof Mao Zedong in 1976 are generallyreferred to as the ‘New Era’ – a term thatis designed, as Zhang Xudong observes,‘to make discontinuity clear while leavingambiguous room for continuity with thesocialist past’ (1997: 9). This ‘ambiguousroom’ meant that during the New Era, albeitwithin certain limits, criticism was not justtolerated but actively encouraged. As a result,all aspects of both cultural production andcritical discourse underwent major changes.

In Film Studies, debates during the eightiesfocused on issues of modernization, traditionand innovation, and national cinema. Amongthe main critical voices during this time wereChen Xihe, Shao Mujun, Li Tuo, Yang Niand Zhu Dake; and in the Chinese traditionof combining theory and practice, filmmakerssuch as Xie Fei, Zheng Dongtian, Wu Yigong,and Zhang Nuanxin also took an active part inthe conversation (Semsel et al., 1990; Semselet al., 1993).

Many scholars complained about the over-whelming preponderance of literary adap-tations and the continuing dominance of



melodramatic mise en scène and narration.They objected to the theatrical acting, ethicalpreoccupations, and excessive sentimentalismthat characterized most Chinese cinema bothbefore and after liberation in 1949. The filmcritic Bai Jingsheng called for the revival ofa specifically cinematic language:

It is time that we throw away the walking stick ofdrama that we have used for so long. We shouldlet ourselves go and make great progress in ourfilmmaking … The key is not to construct filmon the basis of dialogue, but rather on that ofsynthesis. Furthermore, filmmakers should deviatefrom their concept of drama and adopt montage,which combines sound and image. (1990: 6, 8)

This debate heated up even more whenthe Fifth Generation’s new wave of filmsbegan to appear. Even though they did nothave an immediate impact in Chinese movietheatres, the films’ exploration of new stylesand new genres fuelled the ongoing debate onhow to renew Chinese cinema and generate achain of changes in both film production andscholarship.

The complexity of these changes andtheir ramifications can be illustrated by thedifferent fates of two ground-breaking FifthGeneration films: Yige he bage (One andEight, Zhang Junzhao, China, 1984) andHuang tudi (Yellow Earth, Chen Kaige, China1984) Both films relied on a very simplestoryline, a very slow narrative pace, andthe use of cinematography, depth of shot andframe composition to get across their politicalpoints. Both were labelled as ‘art films’ inChina as well as overseas and neither becamea blockbuster. Yet Huang tudi became aninternational phenomenon, whereas Yige hebage remained a domestic one.

Even though it was mostly limited tofilm festival circles and film scholars, theunprecedented international attention givento Huang tudi had a great impact withinChinese film culture as it marked a shift inthe dominant paradigm of national cinema.While the West had previously been seenas a source from which to import andadapt new film theories and techniques(and to a lesser extent films), from themid- to late 1980s on, filmmakers started

to become aware of the potential Westernaudience.

Huang tudi’s international achievementwas followed by the even greater success ofHong gaoliang (Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou,China, 1988). This film managed to performwell at the domestic box office as well asgaining some distribution on the Europeancircuit. Initially, the commercial aspect wassubordinate to the need for intellectual andartistic recognition. As Chinese directorswon awards at Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, andVenice, it became clear that some themes weremore easily exportable than others. ZhangYimou’s narrative style and his portrayal ofChina as the land of ‘primitive passions’fell inthe broad appeal of orientalism and exoticismto Western audiences. It also thus attracted theinterest of Chinese film scholars and culturalcritics working in Western paradigms but witha finely nuanced intra-cultural understandingwhich made strong and innovative critiquesof these new wave phenomena: Rey Chow’sPrimitive Passions (1995), for example.

Starting in the mid-eighties, film scholar-ship on Chinese cinema exploded and articleson the Fifth Generation like Clark’s ‘Rein-venting China’(1989) and Yau’s ‘Cultural andeconomic dislocations’(1989) were publishedin Europe and the US. In more recent years theFifth Generation has continued to provide afocus of attention. In 2002, Memoirs from theBeijing Film Academy, a first-hand account ofthe ‘genesis of China’s Fifth Generation’ bythe screenwriter, historian and critic Ni Zhenappeared in English translation, while Clark’s1989 article grew into the 2005 monographReinventing China: A Generation and itsFilms.12 At the same time, the scholarshipon Chinese cinema has expanded aroundand beyond the phenomenon of the FifthGeneration, continuing to embrace the centraltheme of modernity in Chinese cultural debatewhile bringing Chinese cultural scholarshipto the forefront of new critical theory inthe West.13 For example, American-basedcultural critics Chen Xiaomei and Jing Wangchampioned the work of Dai Jinhua, a leadingChinese intellectual; who has effectivelyraised the issue of women’s cinema in terms of



both production and representation through-out the 1990s. Their campaign successfullyculminated in the publication of a collection ofDai’s translated essays as Cinema and Desire(2002) and a number of visiting fellowshipsin the US.

As noted earlier, this period of scholarshiphas also seen ‘soft’ cinema re-evaluated forthe first time since pre-1949, as Chinesecinema was analysed from new criticalangles beyond the national paradigm. In aninfluential article, ‘Chinese Classical Paintingand Cinematographic Signification’ (1994),Ni Zhen points to the similarities betweenthe Fifth Generation and the Taiwanesenew wave director Hou Hsiao-hsien, whoseBeiqing chengshi (City of Sadness, HongKong/Taiwan, 1989) won the Golden Lionat the Venice Film Festival in 1988, andrelates their overlapping styles to traditionalChinese painting. In China into Film (1999),the Princeton art historian Jerome Silbergeldlikewise underlines the importance of hisdisciplinary perspective for understanding theaesthetics of Chinese cinema, while in Hitch-cock with a Chinese Face (2004) he expandsthe method to include comparative cross-cultural analyses of image-making in filmsand other visual arts. This approach enablesSilbergeld to demonstrate the influence ofChinese philosophical and artistic views asthey are worked through in the presentationof cinematic space and time. He also paysheed to the impact of Western cinema,however, recognizing it as an unstable pointof reference rather than a straightforwardsource of inspiration or appropriation. Ratherlike the ‘translingual practices’ in literaturestudied by Lydia Liu (1995), Silbergeld showshow Chinese filmmakers have translated andtransformed foreign cinematic practices aswell as traditional Chinese aesthetics into adistinctive cinematic visuality.

Ni Zhen’s observation that the TaiwaneseNew Wave was coterminous with the FifthGeneration is important. Although Taiwanesecinema theory is beyond the scope of thischapter, some issues are so closely related tofilm in the PRC that they must be mentionedif only in passing. The government-sponsored

In Our Time project that started in 1982fostered the careers of new filmmakers likeEdward Yang and Wu Nien-jen as wellas Hou Hsiao-hsien. The outcome was aself-consciously intellectual cinema that hasattracted significant scholarship, much ofit interested in the relationship betweenTaiwanese national (or quasi-national) identi-ties and ethnicities, and its cinematic tendencyto ask difficult questions about time, space andthe evaluation of human suffering (Berry andLu, 2004; Chen F., 2000;Yeh and Davis, 2005;Yip, 2004). The existence of the Taiwanesenew wave, along with the increasing linksbetween production houses in Hong Kong,Mainland China and Taiwan that cater to bothPRC and ‘greater China’ Chinese-languageaudiences and also the interlinking of the starsystem in Asia, has helped to establish thethemes of transnationalism and regionalismat the centre of contemporary debates.

NEW DIRECTIONS: 1990s AND 2000s

Urban cinema

The publication in 2006 of Paul Pickowiczand Yingjin Zhang’s From Underground toIndependent, a collection of essays examiningand explaining alternative film culture incontemporary China, consolidated anotherstep in the development of Chinese FilmStudies. Building on a number of earlier,mostly Chinese-language publications (Cui,2001; Cui, 2003; Zhang X., 2004; Zhang Z.,2006), the volume represents a consideredresponse to some new social, cultural andtheoretical questions posed over the pastfifteen or twenty years by the emergence ofnew styles of filmmaking.

One label for this new trend has beenthe ‘Sixth Generation’ – but the term hasproved both controversial and misleading.Certainly, not all ‘Sixth Generation’ film-makers would see themselves as part of asingle movement, let alone the same gener-ation (Dai, 2000; Teo, 2003; Zheng, 2003).They constitute a very broad and diversegrouping that embraces not only emerging



filmmakers working in Mainland China, suchas Jia Zhangke whose films include Zhantai(Platform, Hong Kong/China/Japan/France,2000) and Ren xiao yao (Unknown Pleasures,South Korea/France/Japan/China, 2002), butalso transnational talents like the German-based Li Yang, whose best known work isMangjing (Blind Shaft, China/Germany/HongKong, 2002). The two directors most oftenassociated with the ‘Sixth Generation’ areWang Xiaoshuai and Zhang Yuan, both ofwhom boast long filmographies. Wang’s keyfilms are Dong Chun de rizi (The Days, China,1993), Shiqi sui de danche (Beijing Bicy-cle, France/Taiwan/China, 2001) and Er Di(Drifters, Taiwan/China, 2003). Zhang Yuan,who creates a breakthrough with almost everywork, is best seen as an ‘issues’ director. Ofhis fourteen features, which include a numberof documentaries, Mama (Mom, China, 1990)dealt with disability and maternal emotion,Beijing za zhong (Beijing Bastards, China,1992) ruminated eloquently on the post-Tiananmen atmosphere of Beijing bohemianlife, Fengkuang yingyu (Crazy English, China,1998) pursued the mad brilliance of amillionaire English teacher, and Dong gong xigong (East Palace West Palace, China, 1996)produced a tense and erotic picture of thecapital’s gay and transgendered populations.

Film scholars have attempted to providean alternative analytical framework to theoverly loose ‘Sixth Generation’ label, whichperpetuated the periodic or generationalmodel established by Cheng Jihua’s Partyline history (Cheng, 1963). This had imposeda somewhat simplistic categorization thatgrouped directors on the basis of theiraffiliation with a particular historical moment.The impact of the Fifth Generation actuallyhelped to undermine the model. That group ofdirectors at least had in common the fact thatthey enrolled in the Beijing FilmAcademy justafter the Cultural Revolution and graduatedtogether in 1983. However, the categoriesof First and Second Generation are rarelyused in relation to directors active before theeighties as debates about earlier cinema areusually couched in terms of the oppositionbetween ‘leftist’ or ‘nationalist’ cinemas.

Third Generation directors, including XieJin who is still working today, tend to besubsumed into discussions of socialist realistcinema. Since Cheng’s day, the labels ofFourth Generation and Fifth Generation havebeen commonly applied to directors activeafter the Cultural Revolution period endedwith the death of Mao in 1976. But theattempt to extend his approach and categorizedirectors who began their careers in the1990s or after as Sixth or even SeventhGeneration filmmakers, often simply on thebasis of the date they graduated from theBeijing Film Academy, fails to take accountof their differences or of the loss of a senseof historically-defined cohesion or sharedconcerns.

The search for alternative descriptions orexplanations of the newer films has led somescholars to emphasize their urban locationand inspiration thereof – although, again, thisdoes not apply to them all. Others use aparadigm of independent filmmaking (dulidianying or duli zhipian). Some of the morecynical talk rather of ‘individualistic film’(‘geren dianying’) and criticize some of theworks as representative of a new ‘me-me-ism’ (‘wowo zhuyi’) (Pickowicz and Zhang,2006). This controversy is compounded bythe notion that all new and interesting talentin Chinese film is necessarily believed tobe ‘underground’. The ‘underground’ qualityappears in many cases to be a question of stylerather than substance. Again, sceptics allegethat some young filmmakers are not actuallycensored by the Film Bureau, but elect tobypass its official approval processes so thatthey can claim the status of being banned,dissident or underground and so enhance theirrecognition and credibility abroad. Sellinga ‘banned’ film to a non-Chinese speakingaudience is easier than trying to persuadepeople that a mainstream film with subtitlesmight be educational and entertaining.

The emergence of this independent orunderground movement has had the interest-ing consequence of prompting Chinese filmscholars, both local and transnational, to focusmore than previously on political-economicquestions about production, distribution and



viewership – to the extent that these discus-sions have sometimes overshadowed criticalassessment of the films’ formal innovationsand narratives.

This debate has also pointed to the splitbetween directors making films for Chineseaudiences and those making films for the Westor for the international festival circuit. Thereare no grounds for assuming that the morecommercially successful and ‘entertaining’side of urban cinema is of poor artistic quality,nor that it unquestioningly serves propagan-distic government goals. Xizao (Shower, YangZhang, China, 2000) and Shouji (Cellphone,Feng Xiaogang, China, 2003) are two filmsof this type that have not yet receivedintensive critical attention because, despitetheir huge popularity at home, they areentertainment pieces which touch on modernissues (alienation, relocation, technology, andmarital discord) in ways which do not conformeasily to ‘independent’ or ‘underground’paradigms. Arguably, Zhang Yuan’s Guo nianhui jia (Seventeen Years, Italy/China, 1999) –which tells how a prison officer gives up aprecious holiday weekend to help a killer onday-release find her family – is much moreactively supportive of the social order and therepresentatives of state paternalism than eitherof these light-hearted popular films.

It is noticeable how in the contemporaryperiod the old critical distinction between‘soft’ cinema and ‘hard’ films recurs – enter-tainment, aesthetics and commercial successversus ideology, plot and social message –even though it has become much morecomplicated and can no longer be easilyreduced to a binary opposition.

Video documentary

Overlapping with the new urban, independentor underground cinema that helped to shapethe discourse of what Chen Xihe calls the‘post-blue phase’ (2005: 10) in Chinese filmtheory has been the work of a new waveof documentary film- and videomakers likeDuan Jichuan, Du Haibin, Cui Zi’en, JiangYue, Li Hong, and Wu Wenguang. Since theearly nineties they have gone a long way to

reinventing the genre – incidentally shiftingChinese Film Studies away from its almostexcusive concern with narrative feature filmsin the process. Since documentary filmin China traditionally took the form ofwar reportage and political or educationalpropaganda, this new documentary has noofficial history. It certainly did not developin a vacuum, however, and it needs to beunderstood in relation to the renewal oftelevision, to the emergence of urban cinema,and to the world of avant-garde artists.

Reforms to Chinese television have beeninstrumental to the development of a less ide-ological approach to documentary. Althoughgreat emphasis is placed on the indepen-dence of the new documentarians, most ofthem have also worked for Chinese statetelevision from time to time and someof the resulting productions have displayedtypically ‘independent’ characteristics andconcerns. They stress authenticity, minimizeintervention (by eschewing or underplaying‘voice of God’ commentary) and tend tofocus on marginal communities, the poor and‘outsiders’ (Voci, 2004).

This approach brings the new documentaryclose to urban cinema in terms of bothsubject matter (marginal worlds and anti-heroes) and style (fragmented and oftenminimalist narratives). Zhang Yuan and JiaZhangke have directed both feature filmsand documentaries. Li Yu’s Jinnian xiatian(Fish and Elephant, China, 2001) uses adocumentary style to portray a lesbian couple(played by two actresses, but with many othercharacters in the film playing themselves).Both Zhang Yimou’s Qiuju da guansi (TheStory of Qiuju, China/Hong Kong, 1999) andLi Yang’s Mangjing also mix professionaland non-professional actors and were shoton location, often using hidden camerasto achieve a more ‘authentic’ outcome. Asfilmmakers work across genre boundaries,the very division between fiction and non-fiction has become arguably artificial andinadequate.

The discourse on film generated by thenew documentary movement also overlapswith the underground and avant-garde scene



in the visual arts. Some of these artistsare the topic of Wu Wenguang’s LiulangBeijing: zuihou de mengxiangzhe (Bummingin Beijing: The Last Dreamers, China, 1990).Zhao Liang’s experimental videomaking blursthe boundaries of the real and the sur-real, and his work includes art video aswell as documentary – for example, hisvideo on drugs addicts in Beijing, Zhifeiji (Paper Airplane, China, 2001). Theconcerns, approaches and socio-economicspaces shared by the new documentarians,urban filmmakers and other undergroundor avant-garde artists are clearly chronicledand catalogued in events such as TheFirst Guangzhou Triennial Reinterpretation:A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990–2000) and its associated publications (Wuet al., 2002).

The scholarly debate about documentaryremains quite specialized. Among those tak-ing an active role in the discussions in Chinaare, typically, filmmakers like Wu Wenguang(2001) along with scholars like Lü Xinyu(2003) and Wang Weici (2000; 2001) (seealso Fang, 2003; Mei and Zhu, 2004). In theWest, Chris Berry (1997; 2002) and BéréniceReynaud (1996; 2003) have taken the lead inopening up the topic (see also Leary, 2003;Voci, 2004; Zhang Y., 2004). Increasingly,however, the two groups are involved intransnational conversations as both scholarsand theory travel. In March 2006, for example,a Chinese-language volume on contemporaryChinese documentary edited by Ping Jie waspublished in Shanghai. The collection com-bines essays by Chinese writers with othersby scholars, both Western and Chinese, whoare based overseas and who had previouslypublished mostly in English. This formatrepresents a challenge not only to the dividebetween domestic and international ChineseFilm Studies, but also to the translationand adaptation model that assumes the flowof theory from the West to China (Ping,2006). Fixed boundaries between Chineseand Western critical discourse are givingway to flows as scholars move in and outof China, publishing in both Chinese andEnglish.

CRITICAL ISSUES

In this final section we review briefly a fewenduring themes and topics that are likely tocontinue to set the agenda for Chinese FilmStudies in the coming years, as they have doneover its history.

A Chinese perspective on FilmStudies

According to Hu Ke (Hu 1995; Hu et al.,2000), critical discourse on film in China hasmostly focused on social politics, rather thanart or, in fact, cinema per se. For most of itshistory, it had no autonomy from the unifiedsystem of film production and distribution,which in turn was subservient to political pro-paganda. It remained almost wholly isolatedfrom international film culture; Western filmtheories were simply inaccessible.

Even though it underplays some of theearlier, pre-revolutionary debates about softand hard cinema, Hu’s overall assessment isin general terms accurate. Our chronologicaloverview has also shown why ‘serving thenation’ has been the main concern of bothfilm theorists and practitioners, and howcinema and nation can hardly be separatedin the Chinese context. From the mid-1930s,the emphasis was on cinema’s role in thebuilding of the modern Chinese nation. When,following Mao’s directives on the arts, cinemawas asked to become a political tool forthe promotion of ideology and educationof the masses, the revolutionary ideologysimply incorporated the nation into its rhetoricand claimed, in fact, that the two werethe same. ‘Meiyou gongchandang meiyouxin Zhongguo’ was the slogan: ‘Without theCommunist Party there is no new China’.In many ways, despite its claims of ‘breakingwith old ideas’, socialist realism remainedclosely related to the earlier realism ofleftist cinema: both essentially identified theprimary responsibility of cinematic realism ina Confucian loyalty towards history, societyand the Chinese nation.

Hou Yao, for example, a major filmmakerand one of the few film theorists of the early



history of Chinese cinema, in 1926 definedcinema as a kind of drama and the film scriptas the soul of film. Identifying this principleof Hou Yao’s as the normative thread runningthrough the history of Chinese cinema, ChenXihe (1990) argues that the focus on everydaylife and society, which derives directly fromthe Confucian tradition, is the reason whyChinese cinema is concerned with narrative –and in particular narrative drama with educa-tional goals – rather than cinematic techniquesor formal experiments. Although this maybe an overgeneralization, it is reasonable tomaintain, as Chen does, that ‘the social andinstrumental values of film’ (1990: 200) havebeen the main concern for the majority ofdirectors. The realism that Chinese films striveto achieve has been conditioned most of thetime by ideological and educational purposeswhich lie behind the faithful reproduction ofreality. It was only after the debates of theeighties that Soviet film theory was openedup to André Bazin’s cinematic realism andChinese scholars began to argue about filmaesthetics, semiotics and spectatorship. Eventhough many of them called for a moreautonomous discourse on cinema, the concernwith the making of a modern nation remainedthe central overarching issue, even after socialpolitics loosened its control on film culture(Semsel et al., 1990; Semsel et al., 1993).

The shift in perspective in the early1980s was a major one, as translations werepublished of Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer,and then of Christian Metz, Dudley Andrew,Browne, and Mulvey. While still within theboundaries of a national modernity, filmscholars began to reflect not just on Chinesecinema but on broader ontological issuesconcerning cinema. Those first debates quitesoon became available in the West, withthe publication of two anthologies whichincluded a number of articles by Chinese filmscholars in English translation (Semsel et al.,1990; Semsel et al., 1993).14 Although theseanthologies potentially made Chinese FilmStudies and Chinese perspectives on cinemaaccessible to Western film scholars they were,for the most part, read only by the circleof Chinese film scholars who had already

been following the original debates in China.Twenty years on, however, the number ofinternational conferences about Chinese filmand collaborative research projects betweenChinese and transnational scholars provideevidence of a belated response to those firstexchanges.

National style and Chinese cinemas

Much of the analysis chronicled in this chapterhas focused primarily, if not exclusively,on the relationship between politics andstyle on the Mainland. Nevertheless, wehave also noted the work of writers andcommentators who think about the formalproperties of film art in China, and theirwork is particularly valuable in revealing thecontinuities in aesthetic production valuesand perspectives over many years, and acrossdifferent media. Art historians, directors, cin-ematographers and designers are successfullyclaiming a national style (minzu shi) – whichalso encompasses ‘consciousness’ of nationalidentity and cultural belonging – in thehigh points of Chinese filmmaking (Chu,2002; Hu J., 2003; Lin, 1985; Silbergeld,1999). Of course, such Chinese culturalconsciousness is not homogeneous, nor is itlimited to the PRC or to cinema created onthe Mainland. The cinemas of Hong Kong,Taiwan, Singapore, and Macao, possiblyin that order, have contributed a great dealto the art and depth of Chinese film, definedthrough language and location. In the pastfew years, Mainland Chinese scholars haveincreasingly tended to include considerationof at least Taiwanese and Hong Kong cinemasin their work on aesthetics, theory, or audiencestudies.15 Whether in the Chinese contextthis indicates a new internationalism or anexpansionist nationalism remains an openpolitical question.

To conclude this survey of ChineseFilm Studies, however, it is appropriateto note not only the growth of interna-tional interest in Chinese film over recentdecades but also the broadening of thatinterest to include non-Mainland Chinesecinemas. The reasons for both developments



are several. Global communications anddistribution opportunities have made a widerrange of Chinese films more freely availableto Western audiences. The flowering of talentin a series of new ‘waves’ in Taiwan and HongKong as well as the PRC drew attention to theemerging regional cinemas in the first place.The theoretical work of Teshome Gabriel(1982; 1994) and Paul Willemen (1994) onThird Cinema offered young scholars newways of thinking about ‘other’ cinemas –perspectives and approaches which theyquickly adapted to specific films and filmcultures. At the same time, a number of ded-icated journalists as well as academic writershave helped to create the time and space forthinking about China on the world scene:people like Tony Rayns, Derek Elley, ChrisBerry, Bérénice Reynaud and Mary Farquhar,who in turn built on the earlier work of RégisBergeron (1983) and Joris Ivens. A broaderdebate about ‘Chineseness’ in the ninetiespaved the way for the publication of SheldonLu’s influential collection on transnationalChinese films in 1997 (Chun, 1996; Tu, 1994).The emergence of transnational and globalChina as a compelling analytical frameworkfor studying Chinese film was no doubt duein part to the increasingly diasporic nature ofChinese film scholars. Many of the youngergeneration were born and raised in the PRC,Hong Kong or Taiwan, but have received theirtertiary education in the US and gone on toachieve tenure in American universities.

Recent scholarship has begun to studythe small but politically and socially inter-esting Singaporean and Macao industries inthe context of ‘global’, transnational, or,most immediately, ‘regional’Chinese cinemas(Khoo, 2006). At the same time, work onthe major film centres has continued. HongKong has been a vital centre of Cantonese-language film since the 1950s, supplying theregion with at least one cinema that wasnot obliged – at least not all the time – toproduce films in standard Mandarin, and thathas claimed a realm of authenticity, energyand local grounding for its genres, stars andfads. It now also boasts a number of locally-based scholars who are giving a lead to

international colleagues in analysing HongKong cinema. The film historian Law Karhas published widely in Chinese on aspectsof its style, genres and history, and acts asthe advising historian to the Hong Kong FilmArchive and Gallery. In 2004, he was thecurator of an exhibition that programmeda retrospective season at the Archive tocelebrate the contribution of Lai Manwai,the ‘Father of Hong Kong cinema’. Theseevents, along with a documentary Law Karproduced, not only remind cinema scholarsof the relationship between Guangdong andHong Kong in the development of earlyfilm, but they also suggest how it is possibleto link location and place to film analysis.The exhibition was related to a series of‘trails’ devised to take visitors around HongKong to see places and sites of note infilm history. This approach exemplifies thesense that, despite the international take-upof theoretical adventures in Chinese film overthe past two decades, the field is now returninghome to its sources and origins. This is notto say that the field is shrinking back toa place ‘outside’ traditional centres of filmscholarship in Europe and the US, but ratherthat film scholarship is becoming regionallyand spatially coherent.16

NOTES

1 The Centennial Celebration of Chinese Cinemaand the 2005 Annual Conference of ACSS, ‘National,Transnational, International: Chinese Cinema andAsian Cinema in the Context of Globalization’, washeld in Beijing (5–7 June 2005) and Shanghai (9–10June 2005).

2 Huayu dianying might more appropriately betranslated as ‘Chinese languages cinema’, as a varietyof Chinese languages have been used in Chinesecinema, with Mandarin and Cantonese being only themost recurrent ones.

3 As part of the broader debate over a more China-centred historiography (Cohen, 1984), many scholarsstudying such social and economic factors as literacyrates, urban development and commerce strategieshave argued for the existence of an ‘early modernChina’ that dates back to the late Ming Dynasty(1368–1644).

4 ‘The film Dingjun Mountain was made byRen Qingtai (1850–1932), the owner of the Fengtai



Photography Studio, in Beijing in 1905. The cam-eraman was Liu Zhonglun, the best photographer inRen’s photo studio, while Ren Qingtai himself could beregarded as the first Chinese film director’ (Ge, 2002).

5 ‘In the 1920s and 1930s, the popular pressbecame increasingly more affordable (thanks to theintroduction of copper plate first and photographicplate later) and more sophisticated (i.e., the develop-ment of combined prints). As a result, over twentypictorials and magazines became available in citieslike Beijing and Shanghai’ (Voci, 2002: 101). Whilereadership was restricted by the limited literacy of theurban population and the cost of the magazines, theircontent was often displayed on walls or on the site ofnews-stands (Voci, 2002: 102–103).

6 New Perceptionists (xin ganjue pai) are alsoreferred to as ‘xiandai pai’ (modernists), ‘shuimoshe’ (foam society) and ‘xinli fenxi xiaoshuo pai’(psychoanalytic novelists) (Chen B., 1993: 256–66;Voci, 2002: 72–90).

7 Besides writing for and about film, Tian Han was awell-established dramaturge who also wrote the lyricsof the PRC’s national anthem.

8 Thousands of people attended Ruan Lingyu’sfuneral and her legend has not faded since. In 1992Stanley Kwan directed a film based on her life, RuanLingyu (Centre Stage, a.k.a. Actress, Hong Kong).

9 The view of the present authors is that the tensionwas not removed but displaced.

10 Chinese cinema was never totally isolated.On 8 May 1955, for instance, André Bazin, JacquesDoniol-Valcroze and George Sadoul sponsored theCannes premiere of Liang Shangbo yu Zhu Yingtai(Liang Shangbo and Zhu Yingtai, Sang Hu, HongKong, 1954).

11 Censorship has been the rough end of film’sconnection to the ‘story’ of the nation, or thenational political agenda as a process of critique.Its variations in harshness and subtlety, and itsideological rationality or political arbitrariness, providean important shadow history of Chinese cinema.

12 On the Fifth Generation, see also Zhang Xudong(1997: 233–256) and the analyses of Huang tudi andLan feng zheng (Blue Kite, Tian Zhuangzhuang, HongKong, 1993) in Donald (2000: 57–61; 63–78; 48–55).In many edited volumes on Chinese cinema the FifthGeneration’s novelty/revolution is the most discussedtopic: see Berry (1991); Ehrlich and Desser (1994); andBrowne et al. (1994).

13 For sample discussions of other aspects andperiods of Chinese filmmaking, see Lu (1997) andZhang (1999).

14 Some of the translations were not of a very highstandard, it should be noted.

15 This trend should not be overemphasized.Whereas Wang Haizhou (2004) includes sections onTaiwanese and Hong Kong cinemas, Chen Xuguang(2004) still focuses exclusively on Mainland cinema.

16 This development is producing new names anda new paradigm of regional scholarship: Laikwan Pang

and Siu-Leung Li are examples of young scholarstrained in Hong Kong and the US now publishing inChinese and English on an international stage (Li S.,2003; Li et al., 2005; Pang, 2002).

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China: Cinema, Politics and Scholarship

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